


Ode to the Better Brother

by wolfinyourbed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21709060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfinyourbed/pseuds/wolfinyourbed
Summary: Sam counts his blessings.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Ode to the Better Brother

Sam pretends to sleep, feigning drool against the cool, passenger-side window. It's the dead middle of the night, roadsounds vibrating under the floorboards and Dean has the radio on low, humming to some miscellaneous rock station that favored the classics over whatever mainstream radio was calling music now. Though Sam has to admit, the latest Celine Dion album wasn't half bad.

Led Zeppelin's “Going to California” drifts into the cab of the Impala. Sing-song and ethereal, it lives as a bittersweet reminder to Sam of the time he wasted at Stanford. How he should never have left the family that night in 2005. How maybe Dean should've been the one to have had the opportunity to go to college, for all that Sam accomplished with it. He never talked to those “friends” anymore. Someone else could've used that scholarship money. Maybe Sam could've passed the bar and ended up in some public defender's office, behind a cheap desk. Maybe he'd have married Jessica and started a family, going to soccer games and eating casseroles and getting a paunch. Maybe.

Sam balls up his hand on his knee but releases the fist when Dean starts singing, in earnest. 

Dean can sing. He can really sing, and Sam never noticed before. Dean thinks Sam is sleeping, is why. Clearly, Dean sings off-key just to get on Sam's tits. And this shouldn't surprise Sam at all, because Dean—for all he needlessly doubts himself—is good at everything. He only bounced out of high school because he was bored and too smart for the crap they were feeding the students, whereas Sam had the patience to jump through the hoops. When Dean was forced to take their tests, he never studied and he aced them regardless. Sam would sit up all night with his face in a book and sure, get the grades, but he was never the natural Dean was. At pretty much anything. Sam always had to put the work in. Probably why Dad was always so hard on Sam; John knew it too. 

Almost certainly, Dean would've made more of college than Sam did. 

Dean's whiskey tenor weaves through Robert Plant's plaintive wail, and Sam sighs. Counts his blessings. The fact Dean is still willing to sit in the car with Sam, after the Purgatory year, is no small marvel. He'll put up with all of Dean's teasing and fake foolishness if it means Sam can still sit shotgun.

Sam makes a show of waking up, yawning into a long stretch. His breath probably smells like ass, but oh well. Dean stops singing, shoots a sidelong, rakish smile. There are new wrinkles by his eyes but that's it; the years have been nothing but kind to him. Sam runs a thumb over the old scar in his palm.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Dean turns the radio down. “You need a pit stop? Shake the dew off your lily?” Because Dean knows Sam has a thimble-sized bladder.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Too bad; we just passed the last one for fifty miles.”

Sam makes Bitchface #7,943 but Dean laughs, and Sam knows this is home.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to purge this out of my system. Oddly, it might've actually helped to dislodge whatever's been clogging my creativity. Fingers crossed.


End file.
